These commands have a lot of options, so review the help. You often select nodes and then need the elements attached to those nodes. Or you select elements and you need the nodes on those elements. If you issue an NSEL and get say the nodes on the top of your part that you want to apply a load to. If you just stop there the solver will generate errors because those will be the only active nodes in the model.

It simply makes everything active. It is a good idea to just stick it at the end of your scripts if you do any selecting. These are groups of entities nodes, elements, surfaces, edges, vertices that you have put into a group so you can scope based on them rather than selecting each time. Any named selection you create for geometry in ANSYS Mechanical gets turned into a nodal component — all of the nodes that touch the geometry in the Named Selection get thrown into the component.

You give it a name and operate away. This is the single most awesomely useful command in APDL. It is a way to interrogate your model to find out all sorts of useful information: number of nodes, largest Z value for node position, if a node is selected, loads on a node, result information, etc…. Check out the help on the command. Note: Coordinate system 0 is the global Cartesian system. If you change the active coordinate system make sure you set it back to the global system with CSYS,0.

If you want to plot or list result information in a coordinate system other than the global Cartesian, use RSYS to make the coordinate system you want active. One thing to be very aware of is that each node in a model has a rotation associated with it. In ANSYS Mechanical, when you specify a load or a boundary condition as normal or tangent to a surface, the program actually rotates all of those nodes so a degree of freedom is normal to that surface.

If you need to do that yourself because you want to apply a load or boundary condition in a certain direction besides the global Cartesian, use NROTATE.

The most common boundary condition is displacement, even for temperature. Most people use nodal selection or components to apply displacements to multiple nodes. In its simplest form you apply a single value for displacement to one node in one degree of freedom.

But you can specify multiple nodes, multiple degrees of freedom, and more powerfully, the value for deflection can be a table. Learn about tables here. The F command is the same as the D command, except it defines forces instead of displacement. Know, it, use it. If you need to apply a pressure load, you use either SF to apply to nodes ore SFE to apply to elements.

It works a lot like the D and F commands. Terminology 1. Command Characteristics 1. Data Input 1. Free-Format Input 1. Nonrestrictive Data Input 1. Condensed Data Input 1. Units 1. Command and Argument Defaults 1. File Names 1. Star and Slash Commands 2. Command Groupings 2. APDL Commands 2. PREP7 Commands 2. POST1 Commands 2. POST26 Commands 2. AUX2 Commands 2. AUX3 Commands 2. AUX12 Commands 2. AUX15 Commands 2. Mapping Processor Commands 2.

Command Dictionary I. A Commands A - Defines an area by connecting keypoints. AADD - Adds separate areas to create a single area. AATT - Associates element attributes with the selected, unmeshed areas.

ABS - Forms the absolute value of a variable. ADD - Adds sums variables. ADDAM - Specifies the acceleration spectrum computation constants for the analysis of shock resistance of shipboard structures. ADGL - Lists keypoints of an area that lie on a parametric degeneracy.

AFSURF - Generates surface elements overlaid on the surface of existing solid elements and assigns the extra node as the closest fluid element node. AGEN - Generates additional areas from a pattern of areas. AINA - Finds the intersection of areas. AINP - Finds the pairwise intersection of areas. AINV - Finds the intersection of an area with a volume.

AL - Generates an area bounded by previously defined lines. ANFLOW - Produces an animated sequence of particle flow in a flowing fluid or a charged particle traveling in an electric or magnetic field.

ANIM - Displays animated graphics data for linear problems. ANMRES - Performs animation of results over multiple results files in an explicit dynamic structural analysis or fluid flow analysis with remeshing. ANPRES - Produces an animated sequence of the time-harmonic pressure variation of an engine-order excitation in a cyclic harmonic analysis. ANSOL - Specifies averaged nodal data to be stored from the results file in the solution coordinate system.

APTN - Partitions areas. ASBA - Subtracts areas from areas. ASBL - Subtracts lines from areas. ASBV - Subtracts volumes from areas. ASBW - Subtracts the intersection of the working plane from areas divides areas. ASEL - Selects a subset of areas. ASLL - Selects those areas containing the selected lines. ASLV - Selects those areas contained in the selected volumes. ASOL - Specifies the acoustic solver with scattered field formulation.

ASUB - Generates an area using the shape of an existing area. ASUM - Calculates and prints geometry statistics of the selected areas. ATAN - Forms the arctangent of a complex variable.

BF - Defines a nodal body force load. BFA - Defines a body force load on an area. BFE - Defines an element body force load. BFK - Defines a body force load at a keypoint. BFL - Defines a body force load on a line. BFV - Defines a body force load on a volume. BLC4 - Creates a rectangular area or block volume by corner points. BLC5 - Creates a rectangular area or block volume by center and corner points.

BSAX - Specifies the axial strain and axial force relationship for beam sections. BSMD - Specifies mass per unit length for a nonlinear general beam section. BSTE - Specifies a thermal expansion coefficient for a nonlinear general beam section.

BSTQ - Specifies the cross section twist and torque relationship for beam sections. CBMD - Specifies preintegrated section mass matrix for composite-beam sections. CBMX - Specifies preintegrated cross-section stiffness for composite beam sections.

CBTE - Specifies a thermal expansion coefficient for a composite beam section. CE - Defines a constraint equation relating degrees of freedom. CM - Groups geometry items into a component. CNTR - Redirects contact pair output quantities to a text file. CON4 - Creates a conical volume anywhere on the working plane. CONE - Creates a conical volume centered about the working plane origin. CP - Defines or modifies a set of coupled degrees of freedom.

CPCYC - Couples the two side faces of a cyclically symmetric model for loadings that are the same on every segment. CQC - Specifies the complete quadratic mode combination method. CS - Defines a local coordinate system by three node locations.

CSKP - Defines a local coordinate system by three keypoint locations. CSYS - Activates a previously defined coordinate system. String Substitution in a Command This is the most common usage and the most powerfully.

Strings as Arguments This is fairly straightforward, if a command is looking for a string, give it a string. Conclusions There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated. Like this: Like Loading Sifting through the wreckage: Element Birth and Death in Workbench. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.

Converts a string that contains a valid decimal or integer number as text into a double precision parameter. Converts a string that contains a valid Octal number as text into a double precision parameter. Converts a string that contains a valid Hexadecimal number as text into a double precision parameter.

Returns a substring of the characters in Str1. Fill in Str1 with Str2 starting at character number nLoc in Str1. Left justify Str1 by removing all leading spaces from Str1. Returns the position in Str1 where Str2 can be found. Returns the length of Str1, excluding training spaces. Creates a path string in the current OS forward vs. Takes a full pathname in the current OS and splits it up into pieces.

How can I call these selections. I think CM can create a selection, but cannot be used to flag my selection. While I was still unable to utilize a named selection this way, even going through the procedure described by sathya, I found a solution to my problem.

If anyone want to post a solution for Named Selections for future seekers of guidance, by my guest. I don't know why that is necessary, but else it does not seem to work. Now the components ID should be callable. Then you can use my code above to extract and write data. Does the trick for me, probably not the most elegant way. Hi, I'm also looking for something similar. Ansys customers with active commercial software licenses can access the customer portal and submit support questions.

You will need your active account number to register. Magneticfluxquantum Member Posts: 2. January in Structures. Hi everyone, I'm trying to write a command to save a certain result set as txt-file automatically after the analysis. This task is tedious and time consuming and ultimately limiting the quality of my analysis.

Best regards Magneticfluxquantum. Share on Twitter Share on Facebook. January edited January